Nirvana (music group)

A songwriter hoping to pen a hit has some decisions to make: ballad or up-tempo? Rock riff or dance beat? More specifically, go for a Michael Jackson sound or how about a White Stripes vibe? Musicians aren't the only ones who seek inspiration from others as they create: Art historians explain that painter Edouard Manet was channeling the 16th-century master Titian for "Olympia," his 1863 portrait of a reclining nude. Back here in the 21st century, music producer Pharrell Williams was in the studio writing for singer Robin Thicke and going for, he later said, a "late-'70s feeling" when he conjured up 2013's "Blurred Lines." It's a catchy...

Related "Nirvana (music group)" Articles

A songwriter hoping to pen a hit has some decisions to make: ballad or up-tempo? Rock riff or dance beat? More specifically, go for a Michael Jackson sound or how about a White Stripes vibe?
Musicians aren't the only ones who seek inspiration from others...

Even in the grunge era, when record executives were throwing big money at every heavy rock band that sort of reminded them of Nirvana, Helmet's early years were a blur. Singer, guitarist and jazz fanatic Page Hamilton formed the band in 1989; Helmet's...

The fractured, 28-year history of Scottish indie-pop duo The Vaselines, in brief: In the mid-'80s, Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee were a couple in a band. They stopped being a couple and then stopped being a band, with only one full-length, 1989's...

"That's all we got," said Max Norton, drummer for Benjamin Booker during a sidewalk chat outside Schubas, scene of a blissful sonic crime.
It was the aftermath of a roiling tempest called "Have You Seen My Son," a reading that skirted...

Billy Corgan's booking this Saturday night at Ravinia somehow is both odd and logical.
The odd part is imagining the ferocious/sensitive '90s alternative-rock god howling, "Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage!" to a lawn full of...

The array of activities is familiar to Chicago Recording Co. general manager Chris Shepard as he walks from floor to floor, studio to studio one late morning: a young rock band loading into the large Studio 4; an assistant engineer assembling a...

In 1981, Kim Thayil's band broke up. His relationship ended. His dad, dating a woman he would soon marry, "was ready for me to not be living at home." So Thayil, 21, moved from Park Forest, where he'd lived since he was 5, to Olympia, Wash. He...

Taylor Swift, the seven-time Grammy winner, is known for her articulate lyrics, so there was nothing surprising about her writing a long column for The Wall Street Journal about the future of the music industry. Yet there's reason to doubt the optimism of...

Tommy Ramone, who died Friday of cancer at 65, was the last surviving original member of the Ramones, and also perhaps the most low key and least-known. But he was essential to shaping the pioneering punk quartet’s sound and image.As early as 1975, a year...

'The Jesus Lizard Book" is a beautiful document of a band that wasn't afraid to be abrasive, chaotic, brutal and, sometimes, ugly. A sharply designed coffee-table book for a band that left bruises wherever it went — most of them on the tiny but...

"Play normal music!"
The woman yelling this at Neil Young stood three rows away from him at the Rosemont Theater in 2004. Between each song, as he spoke to the crowd about the next chapter in "Greendale," the theatrical rock play he...

Freshman year at the University of Illinois, I lived in the dorm complex known as the "Six-Pack." This was 1988-89, the boombox era, and everyone seemed to have one propped on their window ledge facing the interior courtyard, and the...

Last Sunday, as you might remember since your brain is no longer frozen, was the nastiest of winter days. Still, a handful of people braved the snow and wind and cold and slick roads to make their way to the Museum of Science and Industry.
"It's a...

Alternative rock band Nirvana, singers Linda Ronstadt and Cat Stevens, and pop duo Hall and Oates led nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 2014 class, the foundation that runs the music museum said on Wednesday.
It will be the first year of...

A telling moment arrived near the end of Jay Z and Justin Timberlake’s “Legends of the Summer” concert Monday at Soldier Field.
Timberlake, alone in a spotlight wearing a fedora with left hand thrust into his pants pocket, did a decent if hardly...

"Burning Bluebeard": Just a few days after Christmas in 1903, the newly built Iroquois Theater on Randolph Street — an elaborate venue where the Oriental stands today— caught fire during a matinee performance of "Mr. Bluebeard," a...

Lollapalooza wasn’t built to last two years, let alone intended to be around long enough to celebrate a 20th anniversary Aug. 5-7 in Grant Park. “I haven’t said this before, but after the first year, I went on my merry way, thinking it was done,”...

Lollapalooza weekend will once again be bustling with club activity before and after the big outdoor shows Aug. 5-7 in Grant Park, this year with four nights of bonus concerts beginning Aug. 3.Though there are no arena-sized headliners playing small...

Dallas Taylor liked to say that he made his first million — and his last million — by the time he was 21.
The rock drummer was a key sideman for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. He played at Woodstock, appeared on seven top-selling albums and bought...

Singer Lana Del Rey has recently found herself in a rather gloomy spotlight.
After citing Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse as her heroes, the 28-year-old New York native recently stated in an interview with The Guardian that “I wish I was dead already.” She...